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India Sinks Lower in Corruption Index

India’s urban middle class has become more outspoken against corruption.

Corruption in India is perceived to have worsened over the past year, according to a new study released by Transparency International, a Berlin-based anticorruption group.

On Transparency International’s latest corruption perception index, India scored 3.1 on a scale from zero to 10, where anything below five is bad news. “It’s not a good score at all for India,” Rukshana Nanayakkara, acting director of Transparency International’s Asia Pacific division, said in an interview. Last year, India scored 3.3.

The study brings together recent data from a variety of sources, including business surveys and country experts, to assess the overall extent of graft in 183 nations.

India ranked 95th in the list – way lower than China, Asia’s other major fast-growing economy, which scored 3.6 points and ranked 75th. Of the BRIC economies, India only did better than Russia, which ranked way down at No. 143 with a score of 2.4. In the South Asian region, India did worse than both Sri Lanka (No. 86) and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan (No. 38).

Big corruption scandals, above all the Commonwealth Games and the 2G telecom scam, together with petty corruption contributed to India’s low score on the rankings, Mr. Nanayakkara said.

But it’s not all bad. One reason why corruption in India is perceived to be getting worse is that more and more people are willing to speak out against it. The urban middle classes, who are exposed to episodes of bribery more than most, have become “a lot more outspoken and much more intolerant of petty corruption,” Mr. Nanayakkara explained.

While Mr. Nanayakkara welcomed structural reforms like the Lokpal to curb graft in the country, he said they were not enough. He pointed to India’s Right to Information Act, which has allowed citizens to uncover episodes of corruption in the public sector. While he praised it as one of the best laws of its kind, he said not enough has been done to guarantee the safety of those who invoke it. Attacks against RTI activists are alarmingly common, and likely discourage many from using it.

In Transparency International’s index, India still did much better than Pakistan (No. 134) and Nepal — the South Asian country where corruption is perceived as most widespread — at 154. At the very bottom of the list were Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia, which fared worst of all. There were no surprises at the top of the chart, with New Zealand ranking first followed by a string of Scandinavian countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden.